by Shiv Aroor
The nearest terrorist in the advancing group was unmistakably Osama Jungi. The men had seen his picture in a woollen cap and sleeveless olive-green T-shirt, smiling at the camera. Now, he wore a dark grey phiran over an olive-green garment. Wrapped around his neck was a checked black and grey scarf. The nephew of the 26/11 mastermind, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, was firing in short bursts from his AK-47 as he stepped towards Corporal Jyoti.
Refusing to move from the line of fire, fearing he would lose his chance to cut them down, Corporal Jyoti returned fire, pumping a hail of shots directly into Jungi’s chest, sending him crashing to the ground. It was the sixth minute of the firefight, and the Garuds had got the man who had given the security forces the slip at least a dozen times before.
Watching Jungi collapse, the four other terrorists stopped in their tracks, now vulnerable and exposed. Corporal Jyoti could have retreated at this point to his position of cover. He decided not to, most likely because he believed that if he stepped away now, the remaining terrorists would find an opportunity to escape.
Corporal Jyoti had expended half his ammunition in the initial burst, but he still had enough left. Corporal Devendra watched in silence as he saw his buddy step towards the remaining terrorists.
‘Cover me,’ he shouted, advancing to close the few metres that separated him from the terrorists. As the crossfire erupted again, he got a fleeting glimpse of one of the terrorists. Once again, a flash of familiarity—it was Mehmud Bhai. Unlike Jungi, though, the LeT’s north Kashmir commander was in Army-like battle fatigues, a common ruse used by terrorists to evade capture.
Stumbling over Jungi’s bullet-ridden body lying in front of him, Mehmud opened fire at Corporal Jyoti, his bullets missing their target by bare inches. Before the terrorist could regain his balance and fire another burst, the Garud commando let loose a spray of machine gun rounds straight into him, throwing him off his feet.
Less than three minutes apart, the names of two of the most wanted terrorists in Kashmir had just been struck off the hit list at Chandargeer. But the operation was far from over.
Half of the six-man terror squad had been eliminated. Two of the remaining three terrorists behind Mehmud Bhai had suffered grave injuries in Corporal Jyoti’s relentless machine gunfire. Unable to hold out against the advancing commandos and running out of ammunition, the three scampered for cover into a ditch a few metres to their right. They were now out of sight.
Once again, Corporal Devendra called out, pleading with Corporal Jyoti to wait until his buddy could reach him. It was clear that there was no stopping Corporal Jyoti, though. He turned around momentarily, the faintest smile on his face, which was glistening with sweat.
‘He said nothing, he just looked at me. And I understood. He had avenged Milind and Nilesh. Jyoti had made his peace even before it happened,’ says Corporal Devendra.
Sqn Ldr Rajiv screamed from the right, asking Corporal Jyoti to slow down, to wait until his buddy could reach him. The commando stepped forward towards the ditch, his machine gun blazing. It was then that one of the terrorists popped up for a fleeting second to fire a burst straight at the advancing Garud.
One of the bullets hit Corporal Jyoti in the head. As he fell to the ground, the machine gun in his arms kept firing, his finger still squeezed around the trigger.
‘I remember the moment so clearly,’ says Corporal Devendra. ‘The LMG was still firing when Jyoti fell. I can never forget that.’
On that grassy patch under a winter sun, Corporal Jyoti breathed his last.
‘I saw it with my own eyes,’ says Sqn Ldr Rajiv, who, by this time, had advanced and called for Corporal Jyoti’s buddy to join him in the front. ‘That sort of courage is almost impossible. I had never seen anything like that in my life. And perhaps, I never will. Few men can match that kind of grit. I am not exaggerating when I say it was an honour for every man in my squad to fight alongside Jyoti that day.’
‘Pata nahin uske dimaag mein kya chal raha tha us din (I don’t know what was going on in his head that day),’ says Sqn Ldr Rajiv. ‘The mission had become an obsession for him. He was completely transformed in those minutes. He didn’t feel the need for self-preservation. He had heard a call from above, maybe for Milind and Nilesh.’
The operation was not over. The three terrorists in the ditch were still firing at the Garuds, emboldened now after felling the machine-gunner who had torn Osama Jungi and Mehmud Bhai to shreds. Their ammunition running out, they were now desperate to take out a few more soldiers before the inevitable.
Dodging direct fire, Corporal Devendra dashed forward from his position to drag away Corporal Jyoti. As he moved, he remembers hoping his buddy was somehow still alive. Corporal Jyoti’s eyes were still open, still blazing, he remembers. Dragging him to a point outside the arc of the terrorists’ fire, Corporal Devendra looked down at his buddy, reaching down to close his eyes. He set down his TAR-21 rifle next to Corporal Jyoti’s body and grabbed his buddy’s machine gun. There were no more than ten rounds left, a single brief burst of ammunition. The weapon pointed, Corporal Devendra rushed towards the ditch at high speed, spraying the last remaining bullets in the ammunition belt straight at the terrorists with a scream.
At that same moment, Sqn Ldr Rajiv aimed heavy fire at the terrorists and lobbed hand grenades into the ditch. There was no way the three could have survived that final onslaught. Twelve minutes after the first shots were fired by Osama Jungi, the encounter was over.
Twelve minutes.
In the two-hour mopping-up operation that followed, the Garuds followed standard operating procedure, taking headshots of each of the fallen terrorists from close range to make sure they were dead. Two of the three dead men in the ditch were LeT commanders Abu Qital and Abu Zargam.
‘I keep thinking what could have happened had the encounter stretched on,’ says Sqn Ldr Rajiv. ‘It was because of Nirala’s otherworldly courage that we were able to finish off the terror squad. He saved many lives by refusing to back down. I watched him throughout that operation. There was a total absence of fear. He was fully at peace with what he was doing.’
With the encounter complete, the men loaded Corporal Jyoti’s body into one of the trucks and returned to base. Six senior terrorists, including a family member of the LeT’s leadership, had been eliminated that afternoon, a stupendous feat for a unit so new to counter-terror operations. But there would be no celebration. The men were in mourning. The CO of 617 Garud Flight knew the loss would never leave his mind. It was the second big blow to the Garuds in just over a month.
‘An operation is good if you don’t suffer any casualties. We killed six terrorists, but the bottom line is we lost Jyoti. I will have to live with it. It wasn’t a victory for us. A man I had trained for years was lost on my watch,’ he says.
The 18 November operation will go down in the Garuds’ short history as their finest hour yet. A little over two months later, the government announced India’s highest peacetime gallantry award posthumously for thirty-one-year-old Corporal Jyoti, the IAF’s first Ashok Chakra in combat. Only two other IAF men had been decorated with the top honour before him: transport pilot Flt Lt Suhas Biswas in 1952 and Sqn Ldr Rakesh Sharma (later Wing Commander) in 1984. Biswas was decorated with the Ashok Chakra for averting a mid-air disaster by belly-landing his burning de Havilland Devon aircraft, which had the Indian Army’s top leadership on board, while Rakesh was awarded for being the first Indian in space on board the Russian spacecraft Soyuz T-11.
When Sqn Ldr Rajiv made the dreaded phone call to Corporal Jyoti’s wife, Sushma paused for a few moments. Then, faltering, she spoke, ‘He avenged Milind and Nilesh, didn’t he? Then Jyoti has gone happy,’ she said, before breaking down.
The commando’s flag-draped casket would be flown that evening to Chandigarh, where a weeping but calm Sushma would salute his remains. Jigyasa would be kept away from the airfield. The next morning, she and her mother would board a flight with Corporal Jyoti’s coffin to Bihar, where
the commando’s inconsolable mother and silent, stoic father waited with crowds of mourners.
On Republic Day 2018, in a pink fur-lined jacket, Jigyasa would be held aloft by her two grandfathers as Corporal Jyoti’s wife and mother, Malti Devi, were escorted to the central dais to receive Corporal Jyoti’s posthumous Ashok Chakra from President Ram Nath Kovind. As the two women were escorted away, cameras would zoom in to find that the President had broken down, wiping away tears with a handkerchief.
Sushma, now thirty-four, will never forget a moment of that cold January morning. ‘I was trying hard to hold back my tears, but eventually broke down,’ she says. ‘I kept thinking that Jyoti should have been there on the dais to receive his medal. The country is proud of him, but imagine our joy had he been alive to receive the medal himself,’ says Sushma, herself the daughter of a retired Army Subedar.
Married for six years, she remembers how life had changed completely in the month after Sergeant Milind and Corporal Nilesh were lost in combat.
‘He would always tell me to be independent, but after Milind and Nilesh were killed, something just snapped in Jyoti,’ says Sushma. ‘He was permanently distracted and restless. He loved us and gave us time every single day. But I could tell that his mind was constantly troubled by their deaths. He was looking for peace. Even in that state he would reassure me that things were not as bad as I was imagining.’
Sushma remembers the day the two commandos were killed in October. Hours later, her husband had video-called her, fully aware that the news on television would have terrified the families of Garuds spread across the country.
‘We were all panic-stricken as we didn’t know what was going on in Kashmir,’ says Sushma. ‘The Garuds were launching operations every day. I received a video call from him on the night Milind and Nilesh died. He said, “Look at me. I am absolutely fine. Stop panicking unnecessarily.” But he was saying that only to calm us down. He himself was shattered, though he had no choice but to be strong.’
If there was one thing that Sushma and Jigyasa looked forward to, it was those video calls. The WhatsApp video call tone became the sweetest sound in a barracks room in Manasbal and in a small Air Force quarter in Chandigarh.
Corporal Jyoti’s call on the night of 17 November was his last. Rebuffing his daughter’s incessant calls earlier, he had remembered to call back before turning in.
‘How was I to know that I would never hear his voice again?’ says Sushma. ‘I so wish we had spoken a bit longer that night. He said his Kashmir deployment would end on 17 January 2018 and he would be back with us. Main bahut khush thi ki bas doh mahine ki baat hai (I was very happy that it was a matter of only two months).’
Sushma remembers how ecstatic her husband had been when he was deployed to Kashmir for the first time early in 2017. His dream to do something real for the country had come true, she says. In their final call, Corporal Jyoti made no mention of the big operation planned for the next day at Chandargeer.
Hours after the Republic Day ceremony, Sushma and Corporal Jyoti’s father, Tej Narayan Nirala, would remember him live on a television news channel.
‘Itihas racha hai mere pati ne. Mujhe aur desh ko garv hai in par. Woh hamesha mujhe bolte the ki desh ke liye kuchh karna hai. Bahut bahadur the mere pati (My husband made history. The country and I are proud of him. He always told me he wanted to do something for India. He was incredibly courageous),’ Sushma would tell the channel, fighting back tears.
‘Nobody can alleviate our pain. But we are immeasurably proud of Jyoti. He truly believed in country above all else,’ the commando’s father had said.
Corporal Jyoti’s Ashok Chakra citation says he demonstrated ‘exceptional battle craft’ as he positioned himself near the terrorist hideout, cutting off all possible escape routes. Laying such an ambush at close quarters, the citation says, demanded exceptional courage and professional acumen.
It added: ‘While the detachment was lying in wait, six terrorists rushed out, shooting and lobbing grenades at the Garuds. Corporal Jyoti, disregarding personal safety and displaying indomitable courage, retaliated with lethal fire and gunned down two Category “A” terrorists and injured two others. In this violent exchange of fire, Corporal Jyoti was hit by a volley of small arms fire. Despite being critically injured, the Corporal continued retaliatory fire. Subsequently, he succumbed to fatal gunshot wounds received in the fierce encounter, which resulted in the killing of all six dreaded terrorists.’
The commando’s buddy, Corporal Devendra, and CO, Sqn Ldr Rajiv, would also be decorated with gallantry awards for their actions during the Chandargeer firefight, receiving the country’s third-highest peacetime gallantry award, the Shaurya Chakra, and a Vayu Sena Medal for gallantry, respectively.
The Shaurya Chakra for Corporal Devendra recognized his fearless role in the operation, his choosing to disregard his own safety to remove the body of his fallen buddy. Terrorist Abu Qital had fallen to a bullet fired by Corporal Devendra during the firefight. ‘To counter other advancing terrorists, he readjusted his arc of fire and provided cover to the LMG man, fully aware of the risk of being exposed to automatic gunfire. Disregarding personal safety, he displayed indomitable courage while assisting in the evacuation of his buddy, Corporal Jyoti, who was critically injured in the gunfight,’ reads Corporal Devendra’s citation. It also mentions the heroic final act, when the Corporal picked up his fallen comrade’s machine gun and charged at the remaining terrorists.
Sqn Ldr Rajiv’s citation credits him for being directly responsible for the killing of Abu Zargam, a Category ‘A’ terrorist and a key Lashkar frontman in north Kashmir. It says the officer exhibited ‘indomitable courage and admirable leadership’ during the ‘intensely fought close quarter battle.’
On Air Force Day on 8 October 2018, the 617 Garud Flight was awarded the Air Chief’s citation for outstanding performance in counter-terrorism operations in Kashmir.
‘I am the Jyoti Prakash of the family now,’ says Sushma, who lives with Corporal Jyoti’s parents and sisters in the IAF quarters allotted to them in Chandigarh. ‘I have to take care of everyone the way he would have.’
It was Corporal Jyoti’s dream to see Jigyasa join the IAF, perhaps as a doctor. He would fondly address her as ‘Dr Jigyasa Kumari’, hoping to instil ambition in the little girl.
‘Jigyasa ko doctor banna padega har keemat par ,’ says Sushma, smiling. ‘Unka yeh sapna toh poora karna hai (Jigyasa will have to become a doctor at any cost. This dream of his has to be fulfilled).’
Sushma herself aspires to join the IAF as a short-service commissioned officer. She is above the age one needs to be to pursue a career in the service, but the military is known to relax rules for widows of men killed in the line of duty.
Jigyasa, fortunately too young to fully understand where her father is, often tells her friends that he has taken his trolley bag and gone away on duty for a long time.
‘She is the spitting image of him,’ Sushma says. ‘She knows the truth, but she’s too young to process it. I will tell her everything when she’s older and has her father’s strength. She already does, in many ways. I pray that no one has to face such a situation. It is very difficult to live without him. We miss him every second of our lives. He surprised us by coming home on Diwali in 2017. Even on Diwali in 2018, I was hoping he might surprise us again by some miracle. It’s that hard to believe that he’s gone.’
‘Agar kissi baat ki khushi hai toh bas yeh ki unhone badla le liya (If I am happy about one thing, it’s that he avenged the death of his comrades). I know Jyoti must be smiling from above hearing me say this,’ she says.
Hoping to ease her daughter into the truth, Sushma has begun telling Jigyasa a tale of how her father left the world to meet his two close friends, Milind and Nilesh. Jigyasa listens rapt, with her usual barrage of questions.
Sushma doesn’t know yet how to finish the story.
3
‘Fire when You Can See Their Faces’
Lieutenant Navdeep Singh
Gurez, Jammu and Kashmir
18 August 2011
‘Woh kya kar rahe hain? Dikhai de raha hai? (What are they doing? Can you see anything?)’
Fifteen minutes before midnight, on 19 August 2011, the soldier focused his night-vision device, the circular view it captured glowing a techno-green, his hushed whisper sharp with disbelief, ‘Kuchh inflate kar rahe hain (They’re inflating something)!’
Standing on the west bank of a bend in the Kishenganga River, barely a kilometre from the LoC in north Kashmir’s Gurez sector, both men were looking in precisely the same direction, their battery-charged monoculars whining softly as the lenses shifted in the tube to focus on a point across the river.
‘Is this possible? Are you able to see clearly?’
‘Zooming now. Looks like a boat. A dinghy.’
The picture was as sharp as it could possibly be. A dozen men stood huddled around an inflatable boat on the Kishenganga’s east bank. Two of the men had just pushed the dinghy into the river. In pairs, they began to clamber aboard.
‘That’s definitely a boat,’ said the first soldier, lowering the night-vision device and staring straight out into the darkness across the 80-m-wide swell of the river.
‘Call Rana. Now! ’
Rana, about 800 m away, was the operational headquarters of the 15 Maratha Light Infantry and sat in a small clearing alongside the tiny Kanzalwan village. In the small mess on site, two officers—the senior-most and the junior-most in the unit—had just finished dinner and were going over the following day’s patrolling plan when the surveillance unit deployed on the Kishenganga’s west bank called in to raise the alarm.
Thirty minutes earlier, Lt Navdeep Singh, twenty-six years old and barely five months into the Army—the baby of the unit, really—had grumbled to his CO, Col. Girish Upadhya.
